Fringe people live in a different world than I do, and from time to time I find it difficult to really understand what they’re even talking about. That was the case with Carl Johan Calleman’s new(ish) book The Global Mind and the Rise of Civilization, which was originally published in 2014 but is getting a new release this year from Bear & Company, a division of Inner Traditions. Calleman, who holds a Ph.D. in biology, believes that the Mayan calendar holds all of the secrets of cosmic evolution. He says that he gave up being a scientist in 1993 and has devoted the last 23 years to obsessively contemplating the Mayan calendar, which has revealed to him that all the universe is alive with a unitary consciousness.

I did not entirely understand the argument, but in essence he claims that the Mayan calendar proves that consciousness cannot be reduced to biology but is instead something spiritually separate. He claims that this relates to quantum physics, and he proposes an entirely new paradigm of science based on Mayan calendar revelations. I have no idea how to even evaluate The Global Mind’s central claim that “mental holograms” emanate from within the Earth and shape both individuals’ personalities and the overall course of history. Frankly, it sounds a bit like Scientology’s thetans shooting out of volcanoes to infect out minds. The difference is that Calleman believes that all of these holograms and the universal consciousness emanate from God rather than Xenu’s nuclear weapons.

Calleman, who believes he is physically “sensitive” to the movements of the Mayan calendar, also claims that the calendar allows him to predict the future, including the 2007-2008 economic crash and the civil war in Syria. Stupid Mayans never encode anything useful like next week’s lottery numbers. He bases his research for the book on such impeccable sources as Philip Coppens, About.com, and, above all, Wikipedia.

Not surprisingly, Calleman has some thoughts about ancient history, and they all revolve around the Mayan calendar. For example, he believes that this calendar explains why the Egyptians expended so much effort to create the Great Pyramid. He improves on other fringe authors in that he concedes that the Egyptians built the pyramids. At the same time, however, he believes that the cultures around the world all decided to build pyramids for the same reason. This isn’t because, as most would assume, pyramids are the most stable way to raise a tall structure without steel frame construction; instead, he believes that human consciousness is preset to evolve into pyramid-building at fixed intervals on the Mayan calendar. Thankfully, these intervals allow enough wiggle room that virtually any date can fit into one of these intervals, meaning that every pyramid belongs to some Mayan calendar period. For example, he believes that pyramid building emerged from “emanations” from the start of the Mayan long count in 3115 BCE, but he attributes pyramid building from 2500 BCE and Chinese pyramids from 221 BCE to the same “emanation.”

Calleman draws on nineteenth century pyramid speculation, notably the claims from Piazzi-Smyth’s Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid, in order to claim that the Great Pyramid encodes advanced mathematical knowledge and geographic knowledge. He adds to these long-debunked claims the idea that the Egyptians gained their pyramid-building knowledge and their advanced mathematical skill not from aliens or Atlanteans but from a “hologram” they “downloaded” from the Earth at the start of the Mayan Long Count. He adds that because the downloaded hologram was new, it was exceptionally clear and therefore the pyramid is more perfect than later buildings.

He also claims that Noah’s Flood was a metaphorical event describing the commencement of the Long Count, and that early myths of the Ark landing on Mt. Judi were meant to tie it to Göbekli Tepe, which he sees as the place of the creation in the earlier Long Count, when the first hologram was downloaded.

Calleman believes that all creation stories reflect the translation from circles to rectangles as the preferred shape, and he argues that this is proof of the existence of God for reasons too complex to explain here. He cites Noah’s rectangular ark as proof, but he fails to note that recently published fragments of the oldest known version of the Atrahasis Epic, an older Flood story that predates the Noah tale by centuries or more, actually features a round ark.

Honestly, I couldn’t read any more of it. I don’t see why we would need to propose magical holograms that shoot out of the Earth to explain why the human mind would produce similar solutions to similar problems around the world.

I have a book that wrote on this and how the pyramids was plotted and build. Till date i'm still very amazed by the story, I'm interested on how they build it rather than seeing it.

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Shane Sullivan

5/1/2016 01:18:07 pm

So it's like an inverted Platonic idealism, where instead of coming from a transcendent world of Forms, ideas come from the dirt beneath our feet.

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Only Me

5/1/2016 01:41:40 pm

Morpheus: What is real? How do you define 'real'? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.

Neo: What are you trying to tell me? That I can dodge bullets?

Morpheus: No, Neo. I'm trying to tell you that when you're ready, you won't have to.

If you'll excuse me, I'll be standing by to download the program that allows me to fly a helicopter, use every gun ever made, and know kung fu.

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Clete

5/1/2016 02:12:34 pm

It sounds as if Carl Johan Calleman and Graham Hancock were smoking the same weed at about the same time.

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Time Machine

5/1/2016 02:50:17 pm

The same weed smoked by the ancient Egyptians who built the pyramids?

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Time Machine

5/1/2016 02:54:16 pm

"the Mayan calendar holds all of the secrets of cosmic evolution"

It was academic historians that started the 2012 craze, not New Age Hippies - they only latched on to it.

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Not the Comte de Saint Germain

5/1/2016 04:16:37 pm

That depends what you mean by "starting the craze." Academics studying the Maya did claim the Maya believed the world would end in 2012. That claim turned out to be wrong, but the academics never claimed that the purported Maya belief had any bearing on reality. The New Age hippies were the first to claim that 2012 really would see fundamental change.

Calleman believes that the 2012 event actually happened on October 28, 2011, when his super-senses detected a cosmic shift. He presumably follows the older and incorrect rendering of the Mayan calendar from the 1960s.

Time Machine

5/1/2016 08:18:51 pm

Robert J. Sharer showed that the final day of the 13th b'ak'tun of the Mayan Calendar fell on 21 December 2012 (Sylvanus G. Morley, The Ancient Maya, Fourth Edition, 1983).

Time Machine

5/1/2016 08:24:08 pm

Just spotted that Sharer died on 20 September 2012 - did not live long enough.

Just like José Argüelles -- one of the major New Age 2012 exponents --who died in 2011.

Ken

5/1/2016 05:14:32 pm

There are five letters in "Jesus" as there are in "Elvis" (exactly one letter for each knuckle of one's hand). Likewise points in an evil pentagram and sides to a pentagon, to the Pentagon - Oh my god, Jesus caused 9-11!!!

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DaveR

5/2/2016 09:28:24 am

There are also five letters in "Satan." We also see there are five letters each in "White" "House." Now, "Satan" "White" "House" comprise three words. World Trade Center is three words, as is New York City. The links are all their if you use your holographic mind to see the truth. Bonzo the Clown caused Jesus to align with Satan in The White House on December 3, 2045 to time travel back to Hollywood in 1924 and convince John Wayne to start smoking cigarettes. The facts are clear on this, Fatty Arbuckle was the mastermind of everything.

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Uncle Ron

5/1/2016 06:45:26 pm

"Calleman . . . believes he is physically “sensitive” to the movements of the Mayan calendar, also claims that the calendar allows him to predict the future . . ."

This is what happens when you spend 23 years obsessively contemplating anything.

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Jean Stone

5/1/2016 07:56:16 pm

When all else fails, fudge the numbers until everything fits to something resembling a margin of error. It works for pyramidiocy, it works for 'megalithic yards', it works for prophecies, it can Work For You Too!

For further information, please write your inquiries on the back of large-denomination bills. The holographic emanations will tell you where to send them.

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flip

5/2/2016 02:29:32 am

Congratualtions Calleman! You've rediscovered the idea of dualism as espoused by Descartes. .... Sigh... these people always think they've come up with something innovative, when all they're doing is retreating into old unevidenced suppositions...

"I have no idea how to even evaluate The Global Mind’s central claim that “mental holograms” emanate from within the Earth and shape both individuals’ personalities and the overall course of history."

Nah, it's just another form of astrology.

But I would love to know if there's a mental hologram that made t-rex what it was though. That'd be cool!

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Time Machine

5/2/2016 05:57:57 am

"old unevidenced suppositions"

Nobody is disputing that New Age is a religion. Many books have been written about it, notably by James R, Lewis and J. Gordon Melton --- more recently in a series of books edited by Henrik Bogdan.

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V

5/3/2016 11:37:53 pm

I am!

Get your facts straight.

New Age is MANY religions. And a whole lot of disjointed, disconnected superstitions strung like beads on a string.

A.D.

5/2/2016 09:17:15 am

"he gave up being a scientist"

In other words he stopped using his brain and began to sell snake oil.

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Time Machine

5/2/2016 10:27:43 am

It's amazing how many people who use their brains sell snake oil

It's amazing how many nutters are clever enough to get educated enough to get PhD with their names on their books,

Note that Aleister Crowley was an intellectual.

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Kal

5/2/2016 03:38:38 pm

Did his mind altering visions of holograms in fact come from consuming edibles and a lil peyote? Sounds like he was freakin on something.

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Time Machine

5/2/2016 07:19:33 pm

"Without any question, the Peyote cactus is the most important sacred hallucinogen, although other cactus species are still used in northern Mexico as minor hallucinogens for special magico-religious purposes" (Susan Toby Evans, David L. Webster, Archaeology of Ancient Mexico and Central America: An Encyclopedia, page 371, 2013)

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I'm an author and editor who has published on a range of topics, including archaeology, science, and horror fiction. There's more about me in the About Jason tab.